Source by Vannevar Bush
device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it can be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.
Bush envisioned the memex behaving like an âintricate web of trailsâ similar to the function of the human mind, which he believed works by a method of âassociationâ and not via an alphabetical index. According to Levy (2008, 508), the most âinnovative featureâ of Bushâs memex system was the establishing of associative indices between portions of microfilmed textâwhat we now call hypertext linksâso that researchers could follow trails of useful information through masses of literature.
Tapping a few keys projects the head of the trail. A lever runs through it at will, stopping at interesting items, going off on side excursions. It is an interesting trail, pertinent to the discussion.
The web is not the memex
See also: the garden and the stream
- A memex contains both original materials and the materials. Unlike the web, there is no read-only version of the memex. Anything you read you can link and annotate. Not just reply, but change
- Links are associative (read: backlinks)
- Links and annotations are made by readers as well as writers. A stunning thing that we forget, but the link here is not part of the authorâs intent, but of the readerâs analysis. On the world wide web of course, only an author gets to determine links. What would it be like to have Curius-like annotations by default?